


What We Kept

by littleshopofhoruss



Series: HSWC 2013 [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Headcanon, Multi, Sadstuck, lots of headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 16:17:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleshopofhoruss/pseuds/littleshopofhoruss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It’s because you and them were made of the same pieces. And afterwards, when you put yourself back together, some piece of them remained."<br/>-The Simple Shattering Of Water, I Wrote This For You</p>
            </blockquote>





	What We Kept

**Author's Note:**

> I stumbled across this prompt while trawling through old HSWC rounds and I was inspired. Prompt found here: http://hs-worldcup.dreamwidth.org/3493.html?thread=1383077#cmt1383077

“The fuck are you watching, dude?”

Dave shook his head. God, the kids in this home. Always pushing their way over his shoulder when he’s just trying to watch a goddamned movie on his goddamned laptop. No sense of privacy, not that he had a lot of room to talk. Guess it’s just what you’re used to. He just hunched his shoulders over and jerked the screen a little closer to his face.  
The prick paid no attention to the message, to the whisper of leave me the fuck alone I have headphones in and don’t want to deal with assholes. “Con Air? I know you’ve got your irony shit, but that movie’s the worst.”

Grunt. Shuffle. Pull the screen closer, crank the volume, curl in tighter.

“Nic Cage is shit, man, don’t deny it. You can’t try and fake sitting through this turd for your bullshit ironies.”

Don’t touch him. Don’t hit him. Hit him and you get shipped off to a new foster home somewhere across the state. Stay close to Austin, so when Bro gets out (child endangerment bull fucking shit he always made sure you were out of the house when he was filming the smuppets going at it and those strifes were just to make you stronger nothing more) when Bro gets out he knows where he can find you. You’ve been luckier than the rest in the home so far- they’ve been shunted around for years, decades. They never learned empathy, that some people just wanted to be alone. 

Not alone, maybe. But sure as hell not with these jackoffs. 

"Maybe you just have a thing for wifebeaters. Reminds you of your bro. That it, fag?" 

Dave took a deep breath. Turning his head as slowly as possible, he let his shades slide down his nose, just far enough for the kid to swear later on that, yes, Dave's eyes were the color of blood. His mouth tipped open, and he garbled out a response. 

"Goors fn'nnyuld hothahty'j otot."

The prick blinked once, then he was gone. Dave allowed himself a smile. Another act like that meant that he definitely wouldn't get away with sleeping in Sunday morning, but at the same time, he'd long since figured out that making up eldritch sounds was a good way to get rid of an intruder. He settled in for the last scene, and the tension in his shoulders sloped away as the first chords of Aerosmith faded in, his fingers moving along to the bass's chords.

\------------------------------

The yarn was pretty, bluer than the sky, and it felt natural in her hands. Jade had no idea how long ago she learned to knit (all the clocks on the island had stuttered and stopped thousands of days ago, and calendars were a distant dream only heard of in books), but by now it was almost instinct. She curled her fingers around the needles and cast on the yarn in idle loops. 

The stitches were her solace now, and she spent her time knitting. Not all, of course- there was food to be hunted, water to be purified, fires to be started and tended to during the chillier nights- but enough that the island was draped with her handiwork. Tents and hammocks drooped from the limbs of the jungle's trees like leaves that grew too fast. Her white tower had been covered over with vibrant swatches and patterns, which, in time, had faded back to white. Even now, she wore a few of her own creations- a bright red cape drooped across her to keep the sun off her back and shoulders, and an orange skirt that dangled gracefully around her legs.

She was very lucky, she thought to herself, that Bec could fetch her more yarn if she needed it. Where he got it was beyond the scope of her vision, but it didn't really matter because it made her happy, and seeing her happy made him happy, and then they were both happy together, and what more could anyone want? So it took him a little longer to charge himself up to his full green vibrance, to fetch a bullet she fired. So what? Everything was alright, even if Bec was tired more. 

The yarn was a little more slippery than the coarse, natural skeins of wool Bec usually conjured, and the stitch she was currently winding around her needle slipped, unravelling the entire row. She whined, a high, growly sort of noise that sent Bec's ears twitching.He didn't move from his position next to her, curled up with nothing better to do than nap. Jade's breath sighed past her lips with a soft whuff as she started the row over. She had somewhat forgotten the sound of speech since Grandpa died- she learned how to wield a rifle before saying her first words- so Bec taught her instead. 

She had spent her life stumbling through books and trying to parse Grandpa's old silent movies. The island had a computer, but the connection was just slow enough that Jade saw no reason to bother with it- besides, she couldn’t imagine there was anything too interesting out there. She had her needles and the strange, disjointed dreams- memories?- that came to her when she slept. Add in her good dog, best friend, and she was content.

The skein was almost gone, and Jade began to cast off. She gave a contented yip as she sized up her latest creation- it had started tapering off a little at the end, but that was going to be okay. This kind of a color, bluer than the sky, just had to become a flag. She would fly it way up on the top of her tower, where it would always flow in the breeze. That seemed logical enough. Of course, there was the matter of getting it up there without Bec catching her and zapping her someplace else, but she might be able to outrun him this time. She must be getting faster.

\--------------------------------

John grumbled a bit, but the smile never faded from his face. "Down, Quinny! I want to see if I can get this to work!"

Harlequin complied, settling down on her haunches and wagging her curly tail. John sighed and brushed the long white furs off of his lap. Samoyeds were hard work, especially ones this young- as energetic as a puppy, as heavy as an adult, and they all shed like crazy during the summer- but ever since he woke up a few days after his thirteenth birthday determined that he just had to get a dog (something fluffy and white that just loved to cuddle), she had been one of his closest friends. His dad had raised an eyebrow at the name, but John justified it by saying that she could double as a guard dog, and he couldn't think of anything much scarier than a clown. 

Now, back to where he was. John tapped the replay button and sat back, drumming out a rhythm to go along with the melody. The mixer software was a little tricky to use, but he'd been playing around with it, and he was ready to test it out on one of his old compositions. His very first, in fact. The song flowed a lot better from the first time he hammered it out, and he'd put a few new spins on it each time he played it over. This recording would be as good a present as any.

He dragged the proper beats over the raw audio, playing with the sliders. Nothing too heavy- Dad wasn't much for newer, throbbing basslines- but just enough to make the song seem fresh and different. Something that would make Dad smile wistfully for the first time in a long while and tell John he was proud of him for picking up a new skill so fast. He'd been out of it for what felt like months, and while John was almost glad for the reprive in the cakes and pranks, he couldn't stand to see Dad so sad. A few times, he'd walked into the dark kitchen just to find Dad fondly regarding a box of Betty Crocker cake mix. John asked him what was wrong, but Dad just shook his head sadly and put the box down as gently as a child, trying to reconcile it with something he'd forgotten.

Okay, so maybe a remixed song wasn't the best thing to give his father. But it was a definite gesture of affection, and it might just be enough to snap Dad back to the present. John knew for a fact that Dad still had an old recording of the song he was mixing. (He'd actually borrowed it, just to listen to it one more time and make sure he would play all the notes just right.) A scowl fell over his face as he listened to it over again. It still sounded too... flat. 

He dragged a new layer over the song file, riffling through the samples that came with the program. Most were designed for wannabe rappers making their own tracks, but there were a few that might work. He scrolled down to "violin", tweaking the timbre until it was just soft enough to be bittersweet. Played over the song, it was a melancholy sort of look at how much he had grown, but the hints of a flute over the top of it (another layer, the perfect descant) gave it the sound of hope, to remind anyone who listens just how many possibilities there were ahead- how much there was to look forward to.

"I mean, that's what I think it's saying anyway," John grinned at his dog. "What do you think, Quin?"

Harlequin tilted her head to the side, tongue lolling out of her mouth in a lopsided, jutting smile.

\---------------------------------

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Rose leaned back and smiled. Another day, another chance to prove her prowess above the other local teenagers- and a chance at easy scholarship money while she was at it. The Waking World was her favorite out of her latest batch (taken with a real film camera, because as useful as digital is she's a sucker for anything old-fashioned). Stark, black and white, high contrast, with a sunrise in the background just peering over the forest peppered with fireflies. A far cry from the instagrammed pictures of beloved pets and younger siblings that had comprised the runners-up of the past few competitions she'd entered. 

Something clenched around her finger as she flexed her hands. Ah, right. Rose unwound the scrap of thread tied around her ring finger- forget-me-knots, she called them. A simple trick to jog one's memory through creating a physical representation of the event in question, just unobtrusive enough to escape the casual eye's notice. Even with the one for the photography out of the way, she had entirely too many projects on her hands- literally. An art history essay, due Thursday. Her physics project, to be in next Friday. A reminder to talk to her English teacher and wrangle together a novelling club in time for November.

Oh, and the talent show, twined around her ring finger in her favorite shade of lavender. While her interest in all things horrible and terrible had waned somewhat, she had found a flair for stage magic and the deception inherent to it. She employed it casually, building sleight-of-hand over her existing reputation until people flocked around her, eager to learn her secrets and surprised to learn just how easy she was to talk to. Her new friends from school- most of whom were just too quiet to stand up for her before, and most of whom she trusted implicitly- encouraged her to try out for the talent show (conveniently located around Halloween) with her own, somewhat scary brand of magic. She wasn't sure how she'd blend together some of her fancier tricks with her favored methods of cold reading in the two minutes allowed for the audition, but she painted up an old knitting needle as a wand and tried out anyhow. The mock seance dazzled the directors, and before she could say "Alakazam," she had a spot in the show roster and plenty of buzz surrounding her.  
Actually, she had more than that- for the first time in a long while, she had a mother. She pulled herself out of her drunken stupor and shipped Rose off to a family friend upstate for a few weeks as she sobered up, just in time to give a proud smile at Rose's largest violin recital yet. Her mother had started dropping hints that Rose might try out for the all-state orchestra next year if she felt confident, but be sure to join a few new clubs next year and get out of her shell, and of course keep her grades up because college is only a few years off darling and there's really no need to get cavalier. Her new friends, though, took a bit of the pressure off- her mother so glad that her daughter was finally making friends that she let it go so her daughter could have a little fun. It was generosity, Rose saw, not any sort of aggression (passive or otherwise), a branch of the love that ran so deep between them that Rose's heart ached when she looked at her mother for want of everything she'd missed... Suffice to say, Rose wore a forget me knot of pink yarn to remind her to work on her mother's birthday present, a huge, unironic tapestry depicting a dramatically posed wizard.

That was all of them. No, there were a few more, ones that never moved from her hand. Another pink one, to remind her to try kindness before unleashing her sharp tongue. There was the black string on her pinky as well, but-  
 _the king was dead fallen and slain but the four were alone now the jade and teal and indigo and grey-red pooled around them like rivers their mothers and fathers and brothers and children all fell justly as heroes and though the door stood before him it wouldn't budge she said they had no frog they had all been killed in the scratch and across the yellow yard so they would just have to work around it so they waited together thirteen for decades with lips and limbs that tangled until the door fell away into fire and she felt the light grow to blinding and burning as her skin bubbled underneath her and boiled and melted and_  
-well, she didn't like to think about the black string much. And then there were her first three, the ones she woke up with a few Aprils ago with no recollection of making. They lined up along her index finger- crimson, lime, and cobalt- and though they had languished on her hand for well over a year, they showed no signs of fading or fraying. Rose frowned a bit as she studied the loops. What were they for? She had no idea what they were supposed to remind her of- only that she never wanted to forget any of it.


End file.
